Such functions for Creative Scotland were legislated for in the Bill - a
notable reason why we opposed it, having seen what loans looked
like elsewhere in Europe:

Section 2 – General functions of Creative Scotland10.
The functions in paragraph (b) of subsection (1) task Creative Scotland
with nurturing the highest standards in the arts and culture in
Scotland. It might do this by selecting particular individuals or
organisations whose practice they believe merits encouragement and
advice, or financial support in the form of grants or loans (see also
section 4(4)).

Section 4 – Grants and loans20. Creative
Scotland may make grants and loans to creative practitioners and other
persons where the grant or loan relates to Creative Scotland’s functions
(which may be subject to such terms and conditions as Creative Scotland
think fit) (see subsections (4) and (5)).

We
outlined our concerns regardling loans and other forms of debt and IPR exploitation in 2008 in the artists' briefing paper and at a
conference in 2010 in conjunction with UWS and members of the
Precarious Workers, which included work on the concerns of micro-finance, see: http://www.variant.org.uk/events/art+labour/Art+Labour.html#L3

Further indications of 'New Business Model' development toward a 'Creative Economy':

Knowledge Transfer Associate - Intellectual PropertyApplications for this post are now closed: ICC, in
partnership with Creative Scotland, is recruiting for a Knowledge
Transfer Associate to support a project concerning intellectual property
in the creative industries. The post will involve close working with
ICC, Creative Scotland and other organisations and will be based at
Creative Scotland’s Edinburgh offices. The project will inform Creative
Scotland’s leading and coordinating role for creative industries
investment strategy.The post is full-time for 21 months, starting 1 April
2012 or as soon as possible thereafter, and is funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, Technology Strategy Board and
Creative Scotland. Application deadline is 15 February 2012. For more
details please visit our Opportunities page.

Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative EconomyDate: 09/08/2012A pioneering initiative to support the growth of the UK’s vital creative industries and arts sector was announced today. The Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy, run by a consortium of UK universities led by the University of Glasgow, will examine a range of issues relating to new digital technologies with a view to meeting some of the central challenges facing the UK’s creative economy.The UK has probably the largest creative sector in the world relative to GDP, accounting for over 6% of the overall economy and contributing around £60Bn per annum. However, building a business, cultural and regulatory infrastructure that can spark innovation, capitalise on new revenue streams and harness the potential of new and emerging technologies are challenges that face the sector as it aims to maintain the UK’s global leadership in this field.The new Centre – called CREATe (Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology) - will address these and other challenges by exploring a range of issues such as those associated with digitisation, new intellectual property issues and how best to support relationships between the arts and technology.CREATe is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).Professor Ronan Deazley of the School of Law at the University of Glasgow is leading the consortium and said: "The Research Councils’ decision to support CREATe is an outstanding result for the University of Glasgow and for the consortium of other Universities involved in this initiative. Working in strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations throughout the UK, CREATe will deliver an innovative and exciting research programme that will have real impact on the creative economy as that economy continues to transition from the analogue to the digital."Professor Rick Rylance, Chief Executive of the AHRC said: “On behalf of the three Research Councils funding this project, and the various agencies involved in it, I’d like to welcome the launch of CREATe very warmly indeed. It represents a fantastic opportunity to take the measure of the way digital technologies are challenging existing arrangements and creating new opportunities in the UK to supply creative input. We very much look forward to seeing how CREATe develops new thinking on copyright and business potential and meets the challenges of interdisciplinary and partnership working. I’m confident it will do so splendidly. It’s a vital as well as urgent task.”Led by the University of Glasgow, CREATe comprises the University of Edinburgh, University of Strathclyde, University of St Andrews, University of Nottingham’s digital economy hub (Horizon), the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Goldsmiths, University of London.Although not providing funding, NESTA, the Intellectual Property Office and the Technology Strategy Board will also be involved in the CREATe centre.END

Lecturer in Art Law and BusinessSchool of Culture and Creative Arts - University of GlasgowTo undertake research of world-quality in Art Law, Art Business or Art Markets and lead the University's teaching in this area. The post will be part of a new development in Art, Law and Business within the School of Culture & Creative Arts, in collaboration with Christie's Education in London and with colleagues in the Schools of Law and Business. The post holder will work with the MSc Programme Director in Art, Law and Business at Christie's Education to deliver teaching in Art Business, Law or Art Markets.

Christie’s Education London: History of Art and Art-world PracticeChristie’s Education London is an associated Institute of the University of Glasgow. The full range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses lead to degrees awarded by the University. Choose from the Arts of China, the Arts of Europe, Modern and Contemporary Art, and Art, Style and DesignFrom 2013 a new option in Art, Law & Business within all our Postgraduate courses will allow students to explore the ethical and commercial side of art-world-practice.This is the first year of the programme. Students from this programme will be well qualified to pursue a number of careers in the art world and in creative industry, as they will have had the particular experience of working in an Auction House to add to their CV. Graduates from our other Master's programmes include: auctioneers, art dealers, museum curators, gallerists, journalists, art insurance brokers, art investment managers, writers, art historians and lecturers.

Sunday, 9 December 2012

"…The battle over IP rights, monetisation of the net and the tension
between content creators and distributors is what consumes the creative
hub of London. Scotland has to get engaged in this debate and we must
stake our place in the ever shifting sands of this new environment. …"

We believe that Creative Scotland will look to generate income streams (for itself) through the exploitation of cultural institutions and cultural workers, particularly through increasing the burden of debt. Increasingly, they will be treated as the consumer base for a new financialised system of commercial ‘creative’ exploitation - indebting artists and organisations whilst exploiting retention of Intellectual Property Rights.

NESTA was the outcome of such an exploration of copyright- and profit-orientated approaches to ‘investment’ - “set up with Lottery funding to help people turn bright ideas into products, services or techniques with social and commercial benefit”. NESTA advocates its retention of patent rights for intellectual property resulting from publicly funded work and the wider state exploitation of IPR. This is a significant shift from previous public sector models of support (however partial and problematic they continue to be with regard to elite power and their exercise of cultural taste) to a commercial model of exploitation still ultimately based on monopoly power.

“ [T]he cultural industries are seen as complex value chains where profit is extracted at key nodes in the chain through control of production investment and distribution and the key “creative” labour is exploited not, as in the classic Marxist analysis of surplus value, through the wage bargain, but through contracts determining the distribution of profits to various rights holders negotiated between parties with highly unequal power (Caves 2000). [For example, through the exploitation of Intellectual Property Right, as NESTA advocates & promotes] ... [T]he political economy approach placed its major emphasis on the technologies of distribution, on the ways in which key economic and regulatory debates were to be seen as struggles over access to distribution under shifting technological conditions without any necessary effect on either the nature of the product being distributed or the relation with the audience. In particular, this analysis stressed the ways in which the profits of the whole process were returned to controllers of technological distribution systems rather than to the original producers of the cultural products or services.”

(‘From Cultural to Creative Industries: An analysis of the implications of the “creative industries” approach to arts and media policy making in the United Kingdom’, Nicholas Garnham, International Journal of Cultural Policy Vol 11, No. 1 2005)

Liberal MSP Jeremy Purvis challenged Fabiani over the “provision to provide loans for business enterprise, although we still do not know how that will be delivered, or, indeed, what priority the new organisation will give to business support -- as opposed to acting as a grant- making organisation for arts bodies -- as there must be some form of financial assistance and there will be a cost in creative Scotland providing such services.” Indeed, a significant aspect of the financial crisis has been “financial institutions that aren’t banks from a regulatory point of view but nonetheless perform banking functions.” (Guardian Weekend, Dec 6 2008) It is doubtful a coincidence that Ewan Brown, an ex-banker complicit in ‘greed is good’ demutualisation and deregulation of financial services, has been placed in charge of overseeing Creative Scotland Ltd and its metamorphosis.

Crunch

If Creative Scotland mirrors other European models, and given what the Culture Minister has said to date, the likelihood is that in Scotland, too, there will be significant financial pressure to replace grants with a system of credit or loans for both artists and organisations. Adopting an exploitative commercial model for ‘creative’ production would immediately place Creative Scotland at ideological odds with cultural organisations and services in Scotland established as not-for-profit. Furthermore, given the economic climate is predicted to worsen, such a move is sure to be ruinous for the organisations and infrastructure reliant on grant funding. There is evidence. A credit/loans system for arts organisation has only recently been tried and tested in Europe, before the height of the credit crunch. It failed. The Catalan Department of Creative Industries is currently under investigation for their calamity.As the state seeks to reorganise and in part withdraw its already limited forms of public sector support and economically mobilise culture, cultural institutions are being given the task of attracting inward investment and contributing to cultural tourism and urban regeneration. […]It is widely accepted that a cause of the current financial crisis was the rampant free-market exploitation of debt/ credit and the introduction of speculation and risk into an otherwise marginally more stable affair. With regard to Creative Scotland, we can detect no acknowledgement of this global tectonic shift and the deepening international financial crisis, and how it will affect artists in Scotland.

[ends]………

What follow are our exchanges with Pete Wishart at that time - he was encouraging all to waft past those "stale" debates on policy and structure which were raising opposition to the (cross-party) neo-liberalisation plans for Creative Scotland:………19 January 2009

Been following with interest your campaigning on Creative Scotland

But I do note in your petition a concern about intellectual property rights. I was wondering what they specifically are? I am a co-chair of the all party group on IP and I take a great deal of interest in this issue. I am also serving on a Parliamentary group looking at IP three years on from Gowers. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowers_Review_of_Intellectual_Property]

You will be aware that IP is nearly exclusively reserved to Westminster, and Holyrood has Very little, if any, responsibilities on IP. Look forward to hearing what your concerns are and if they can be addressed. I have also recently written an article on why I believe it is imperative that the Creative industries/economy sit with the traditional artistic disciplines on the new body which featured in Fridays Scotsman.

CheersPete Wishart MP………19 January 2009

Hi Pete

As so little of anything concrete publicly exists regarding Creative Scotland, other than the repeated platitudes, it's very difficult to respond in detail other than to express the concerns we already have and to ask for more detail so that those concerns might be allayed.

It would be a great help if you and / or the Culture Minister could provide the details of the Transition Team's examination (or any other Creative Scotland / Scottish Arts Council / Scottish Screen discussions or consultancy work) of IPR and exactly what Creative Scotland's position will be on IPR? Not least how this relates to the models of IPR exploitation as proposed and exemplified by NESTA?

NESTA was the outcome of an exploration of copyright- and profit-orientated approaches to ‘investment’ -- “set up with Lottery funding to help people turn bright ideas into products, services or techniques with social and commercial benefit”. NESTA advocates its retention of patent rights for intellectual property resulting from publicly funded work and the wider state exploitation of IPR. The Scottish Arts Council has just put out a consultancy tender for "The 21st Century financing for the arts and creative industries in Scotland Study", does the exploitation of IPR feature in this consultancy?

Given the Transition Team appear to have lifted wholesale NESTA's definition of 'Creative Industries', it would also be of benefit to know who associated, directly or indirectly, with NESTA the Transition Team consulted / met with, how frequently and what was discussed, and how influential NESTA have been on the thinking underpinning Creative Scotland?

………Scotsman - Pete Wishart - Creative Scotland Debate

The relationship between artists and funding bodies is often a rocky one, and a recent petition by the Scottish Artists Union on the subject of Creative Scotland has naturally sparked much attention.

The artists’ concerns seem to relate to the period of transition in the formation of Creative Scotland, and I know that Linda Fabiani, the Minister for Culture, has offered to meet with the SAU to discuss the matters they raise directly.

Constructive debate is of course an essential part of government, though, in my view the campaign against the inclusion of the Creative Industries in the new body is entirely wrong headed, and completely misses the point over what the establishment of Creative Scotland is about.

There should be absolutely no tension whatsoever between support for our traditional artistic disciplines and the creative industries. Indeed it is absolutely imperative that they each inform the other. There can be no creative industry without our artists, designers and the musicians. And indeed, what is an art gallery if not a creative industry, and what can the sale of a painting be called other than creative enterprise.Where it is essential that we retain the hands off approach to artistic endeavour (and both enjoy and fund art for arts sake) we must properly understand and appreciate the future role of our creative industries and understand the centrality of artists and creators in that process.

This is important because we may be heading into a new industrial reorganisation on the scale of the 1980’s. Then it was the heavy industries that suffered terminal decline. What replaced them in Scotland was of course financial services. The credit crunch and down turn of the late noughties means Scotland is again adapting to a new economic future. We will need something new to assist the Scottish economy – step forward our creative industries.

It strikes me that our creative industries can be Scotland’s way out of the downturn, they already support 60,000 jobs and contribute over £4 billion to the wealth of Scotland. In Scotland we excel in the creative industries. Being innovative and creative is in fact a traditional Scottish skill.We should be placing what we do in our creative industries in a line that goes all the way back to the great Scottish inventions and achievements of the past. Our artistic, cultural and creative industries can be properly rooted in recognising our history of fantastic creative and unique cultural output. 21st century Scotland has great artists, musicians and creators, and Creative Scotland is an opportunity to attract and retain talent, where the arts and our creative community are supported and celebrated - and ensure that their contribution to the economy is maximised.

In Scotland we excel in Digital Media, broadcasting and design. Our ambition must be to be a European hub for creative enterprise and that means a European hub for culture and the arts.

Siting our creative industries alongside our artists is surely how we achieve this. To do that it is important that we continue with the establishment of Creative Scotland and move away from debates over whether it goes ahead to the much more important debate about defining its context and hinterland. Working together, we have the opportunity to transform for the better the landscape for investment in our art, artists and creative organisations. Creative Scotland is a bold initiative which will equip Scotland with a dedicated organisation capable of driving vision and organisational support at a time when creativity is vital to Scotland's cultural self-confidence and international reputation. Our artistic and cultural talent deserve an energetic and strategic cultural development body that is fit for the 21st century. I have no doubt that, given the chance, Creative Scotland can deliver that excellence – and we should all engage constructively in the debate about our vision for the cultural future of Scotland.

ENDS………27 January 2009

Thanks for that. Firstly the work of NESTA is fantastic and has also recently been beefed up with the UK Government's creative industries strategy. I don't know the answer to your question about who from the transition team discussed these issues with NESTA but will attempt to find out. You should also be aware of the work of Skillset Scotland who are proposing some very good suggestions about promoting the value of intellectual property.

Probably more critically is the totality of the IP framework most recently defined by the Gowers Report. My all party group have been unravelling Gowers to see if it is properly equipped to cope with the new demands of the creative economy and this report will be published in the spring. Unfortunatly the Scottish Parliament does not have the powers to legislate on IPR, and Creative Scotland will be very much dependent on what comes out of Westminster.

However NESTA themselves identify Scotland as a hot spot for creativity and recognise the fantastic work being done in Scotland. This is why I think it is imperative that the Creative Industries sit alongside the traditional artistic disciplines on Creative Scotland (the subject of my Scotsman article). Scotland can become a European hub for the creative industries and this has to be our ambition, but other small nations are really starting to get their act together and we must keep pace.

I am totally relaxed that Creative Scotland is a thin bill and think that this is a good thing. The new body has to grow organically and if we over prescribe for it now before it gets going we may be compromising its potential and ability to innovate.

I know that change is difficult and there are anxieties but we must be careful not to fill the sector with unecessary despondency. Scotland has great opportunities and we are supremely placed to take advantage of our unique place. What I want more than anything is to get over this debate about structures and boards and get to the important stuff about contexts and visions.

Hope this helps.

Pete Wishart………28 January 2009

Hi Pete

Attached as a PDF is a recent academic report on NESTA. It's a very neutral and timely analysis of NESTA's flawed methodological approach. You should read it. Unfortunately it deals with the real-life boring stuff of does-it-do-what-it-says-it-does -- sorry if this in any way inconveniences your "visions". I always found hard facts a preferable grounding to wishful thinking, as the problems of the Catalan Department of Creative Industries are testimony to, especially when you're dallying with mine and others' livelihoods and the entire creative base of Scotland.

The Catalan Department of Creative Industries is currently under investigation for their calamity over the introduction of loans for arts organisations. Below are links to three articles (in spanish) regarding the problems the Department is having getting the money back it distributed in the form of repayable credit / loans:- The first one, is an article written by the current director, in which he tries to explain the situation. He writes (roughly) : "We conceived the refundable contribution [credit / loans] system as a way to have financial participation in market driven cultural projects and, therefore, be subject to enterprise risk. We tried to introduce a risk culture into a sector that used to function through public subsidies." ["De entrada, la aportación reintegrable se concebía como un mecanismo de participación financiera en un proyecto cultural orientado al mercado y, por tanto, sujeto a un cierto riesgo empresarial. De algún modo, se intentaba introducir en la cultura del riesgo a una estructura empresarial más avezada a la subvención pública."]http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cataluna/ayudas/ICIC/industria/cultural/elpepiespcat/20081101elpcat_26/Tes- The second article talks about how an investigation is being initiated into the Department:http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cataluna/Sindicatura/halla/anomalias/mayor/parte/ayudas/Cultura/elpepiespcat/20081021elpcat_9/Tes- And the third talks about how they are trying to reconceptualize the loans back into subsidies as they can't track many of the people who received them -- who quite simply can't pay them back anyway:http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cataluna/PSC/minimiza/irregularidades/subvenciones/Cultura/elpepiespcat/20081112elpcat_9/Tes

You might also want to have a read of 'The creativity fix' by Jamie Peck: "Creativity strategies have been crafted to co-exist with urban social problems, not to solve them," writes Peck. "It should come as no surprise, then, that the creative capitals exhibit higher rates of socioeconomic inequality than other cities." http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-28-peck-en.html

As others talk of the failure of governmental regulation and oversight, it seriously worries me that you are "relaxed" with regard to how Creative Scotland might "innovate". Something similarly redolent of Thatcherism was said of the finance industry not so long ago. As is becoming increasingly clear, it is in that area of exploitation Creative Scotland is truly intended to "innovate". And fostering a culture of carelessness with regard to markets is not reassuring. To your credit, you did steer clear of the phrase "light touch".

Though I note, where actually warranted, the Scottish Government are more reticent about upholding the "arms length principle" -- as in the Scottish Government carving out greater budgetary influence over cultural provision by ring-fencing the 'Creative Scotland Innovation Fund' for ad hoc "new government priorities". Currently, it is the Scottish Arts Council's role to determine what percentage of its budget is spent where and not for ministers to dictate. In this way it adheres to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19, which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression..."

While you encourage everyone else to waft past those "stale" debates about structures, those that know how power works on the inside, such as the Edinburgh finance/legal/property industry, are evidently quite keen to have those discussions you so readily dismiss: The outline for a panel discussion “Copyright – Credit Crunch Asset” (no question mark) organised in the heart of Edinburgh's finance services industry, just popped into my email box (please see details below). Again, this comes back to the question of democratic oversight, rather than unaccountable ad hoc lobby groups with ties to the finance industry having the ear of government. To misquote: to lose one economy to the financial sector may be regarded as a mistake; to lose another looks like negligence.

So, we maintain that in the interests of clarity and transparency, as well as the consultation that the entire arts sector is crying out for, Creative Scotland should not be included in the Public Services Reform Bill but undergo the rightful parliamentary scrutiny it deserves, which can only be achieved as a separate Bill. That there is now no impediment to the reintroduction of the Creative Scotland legislation, and, since the Public Services Reform Bill has been delayed by the addition of instructions that we are told have nothing to do with Creative Scotland, reintroduction as the Creative Scotland Bill is now the faster and more progressive option -- it might even restore a little 'blue sky' confidence in the process you are so keen to see. This would also not precipitate the scrutiny that the Culture Minister has said is the principal advantage of the legislative route, and would provide the debate craved by the entire arts sector and also protect the future cultural agency, should it come to pass, from claims of illegitimacy.

It also worries me that you say "other small nations are really starting to get their act together and we must keep pace", just as Iceland's parliament collapses, following its economy -- not something I'm keen to keep pace with; nor with Catalonia's immiseration and endebtment of artists. Ireland : first among the 15 nations that use the euro to officially fall into recession. Before you go off on a tangent to Norway, let's be clear: to have the Social Democratic gains of Norway requires the Social Democratic system of Norway -- you cannot 'graft' Social Democratic gains onto a neoliberal market economy. It's not a Woolworths' pic-n-mix bankruptcy sale. And you won't distract from the negative effects of neoliberalism by ratcheting up a deleterious competitive nationalism.

In one sense you are right about catching up with our neighbours:

A couple of years ago Marita Muukkonen of the Finland art magazine FRAME, and formerly of the arts institute NIFCA, wrote: “Looking at recent policy and political developments in arts and culture in Finland and the EU it becomes clear that cultural-political instrumentalisation and economisation is infused with nationalist and protectionist tendencies, and that is a growing concern.” Marita also worryingly identified the strengthening tendency of the transformation of cultural politics into cultural economics, the idea of arts and culture as a competitive factor of national economic growth. Evidently, it didn't protect Finland from the financial melt down. You can find a PDF of Marita's paper here: http://www.variant.org.uk/events/MM_Market.pdf

Also, Be[com]ing Dutch: "A two-year project developed both inside and outside the Van Abbemuseum, which consists of debates, reading groups, artist's projects, exhibitions, residencies, and forms of collective participation and production. As questions of cultural identity and normative 'national' values become ever more of an issue in political and cultural debate, Be[com]ing Dutch asks whether art can offer alternative examples of thinking about how we can live together today. Be[com]ing Dutch seeks to put our ideas of cultural identity under pressure and examine the process of inclusion and exclusion in the world today."

Or, Translocal Express. Jubilee Edition: "An international seminar in the series of Public Preparation events addressing the growing tendencies of nationalism on Eastern borders of Europe (from Helsinki to Istanbul) and its relation to contemporary art. ... Translocal Express. Jubilee Edition takes place in parallel with the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia, aiming to turn attention to alternative ways of how to think about society in the era of global democracy as a counterperspective to the narrow nationalist mindsets that are dominant in contemporary Estonia."

Or, Rethinking Nordic Colonialism: "A Postcolonial Exhibition Project in Five Acts. Curated by Kuratorisk Aktion for NIFCA, Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, the project combined exhibitions with workshops, conferences, hearings, and happenings in the locations of Reykjavik (Iceland), Nuuk (Greenland), Tórshavn (The Faroe Islands), Rovaniemi (Finnish Sápmi), Copenhagen (Denmark), Helsinki (Finland), Oslo (Norway), and Stockholm (Sweden). Fifty-six internationally recognized artists, theorists, politicians, and grassroots activists from all over the world participated in the project and exchanged colonial and postcolonial experiences and strategies during its course. Together, they examined why this past has been forgotten and how it continues to reproduce itself as waves of intolerance, xenophobia, and nationalism."

If it truly is the 'contest' you describe, isn’t it time we at least caught up with our northerly and eastern neighbours and started to publicly discuss equally searching questions about the manifestations of competitive nationalism and its inter-relationship with a discredited free market ideology? Or should their publics be better equipped than ours to understand their global situation; their democratic systems more attuned to a healthy, functioning public sphere? Using the economic crisis as an excuse to stifle debate isn't what I thought of as the Enlightenment tradition.

So you are also quite right about needing context:

There is an urgent need to contextualise Creative Scotland with regard to deeper policy issues such as the paradoxical responses to the financial crisis, a crisis which has discredited the 'Anglo-American' model of finance-led capitalism, yet the Scottish Government continue to pursue the main planks of that neoliberal agenda, including labour market 'reforms', privatisation, and financialisation as is exemplified in what we know of the proposals for Creative Scotland. The Creative Scotland profit-orientated approach to culture / information management belong to a pre- financial collapse set of cultural / developmental policies peddled by the likes of the Bush-era Richard Florida, and new Labour's Demos and NESTA. Florida's lazy but influential theory that cities can reverse sinking fortunes by becoming fashionable magnets for a mobile, trendy elite was never the case -- in Europe this gentrification mostly hinged on public sector disinvestment via property speculation, which has brought its own problems, and which is precisely why we have Glasgow City Council's current cash-crisis. Not only was it reliant on an unstable property bubble, but it relied on disinvestment of a finite public resource -- once you've no assets of any worth left to strip, then what? John Swinney is recently reported as saying taxpayers are losing out on millions of pounds because public bodies are carrying out "irresponsible" land sales while prices tumble during the recession. Is he wrong? But what policy have GCC got other than Florida's candy floss which is found severely wanting? So hardly political models I would expect a progressive Social Democratic Scottish Government to be tagging on to.

I was also hoping the "change is difficult" pseudo-psychology was just contained to new Labour's happiness industry assault on the poor, but it seems either contagious or too convenient a tool, and that, I'm afraid, does fill me with despondency.

Wednesday 25 February – Edinburgh – 6pm – (Coffee 5.45pm) – at Anderson Strathern LLP, 1 Rutland Court, Edinburgh (£5 per head)“Copyright – Credit Crunch Asset”Speakers: Simon Brown, Partner, Anderson Strathern LLP [who are hosting it] and Professors Simon Frith and Hector MacQueen, both of University of EdinburghSimon Frith is Tovey Professor of Music at the University of Edinburgh and chairs the judges of the Mercury Music Prize. He co-edited Music and Copyright (Edinburgh University Press 2004) and is currently directing an AHRC funded research project on the promotion of live music in Britain. Hector MacQueen, Professor of Private Law, as RSA Fellows know, was closely involved in IP issues and the RSA’s Adelphi Charter. He publishes widely on issues of public, IP, copyright and design law. Simon Brown is a partner with Anderson Strathern and is on the Board of Publishing Scotland.

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

Recently, a letter signed by 100 of Scotland's cultural 'great-and-guid' complained about Creative Scotland to its Chair, Sir Sandy Crombie (Senior Independent Director of the Royal Bank of Scotland) for its "lack of empathy and regard for Scottish culture".[i] Yet the stance taken is 'this isn't political'. The disruption being contested by this 'interest coalition' is, instead, an issue of management competency and of CEOs being from outwith an intimate construction of 'community of belonging' – not something more purposeful. For them, here in public at least, such disruption is certainly not indicative of the neoliberal policies of the devolved Scottish state "in the service of global economic competitiveness".[ii]

In what should have better been a discussion concerning the more equitable distribution of public resources, much creative labour is inevitably absented instead.[iii] Worryingly, what's advocated by the signatories as underpinning state administration of Culture is a move from a system of faux-meritocracy ('talent') to a lodging of authenticity ('Scottishness')...

In 1994 the Scottish Arts Council launched 'Towards a National Cultural Strategy'. Fast forward through waves of consultants' graft, chaperoning by bankers[iv] outwith regulatory oversight[v], much 'sectoral' hand-wringing, and we arrive today at Creative Scotland (CS).

As part of a much promoted Scottish government 'bonfire of the Quangos', CS is the merger and re-organisation of Scottish Screen and Scottish Arts Council following a Europe-wide 'creative industries' policy script. Historically contingent, this mobile script does not manifest itself the same everywhere, but we can recognise it as not being unique to Scotland either. It concerns the strengthening tendency of an overly celebratory transformation from cultural to creative enterprise – whereby the processes of arts and culture are harnessed as a competitive factor of national economic growth. What emerges is the fuller integration of the aesthetic disciplines into the nation's economic production of value.

Other countries' experiences of these processes might then be relevant to understanding the structural reorganisation now occurring in Scotland – not least countries undergoing contested and reformulated nationalist assertions of identity in a contemporary European context. Experiences such as:

• the role that assertions of national identity have in informing the economising of culture and the policies that shape it;

• the impacts on cultural equality and on communicative freedom, in the context of the cultural-economic policy approaches of 'competitive nationalism' (whereby aspects of life and identity, including education, arts, sports and culture, are harnessed as factors of national economic advantage).

Signposting the shift to a 'service delivery' model of provision and 'single purpose' realignment of culture to enhance the economy, CS was legislated for via the Public Services Reform bill (2010). Through this, the state structure necessary to protect certain interests, and which was responsive to and generative of those interests, is being recast. But no single policy script acts alone. CS sits across and is responsive to different policy influences, like those the Arts Councils had to address, e.g. 'Social Inclusion'.

Underpinning reorganisation is the assumption that Scotland's institutions are not competitive enough; that they are, in part, the reason for economic stagnation. What's needed therefore is some 'flexibility' and 'innovation' in the system – the freedom for the state to experiment with different ideas of institutional organisation in practice. In popularist narrative this gets shortened to 'creativity' and 'entrepreneurialism'; the magic bullet to stagnation. These are necessarily attributed positive attitudes, values and behaviours.

In order to 'stimulate innovation' in the economy, CS seeks to induce competition so as to 'positively' disrupt what are perceived as too-closed 'constellations of opportunity'. This disruptive competition will enable wider market access to resources, which are thought to be held too tightly by too static a set of interest groups (e.g., the list of signatories above). What's needed is a different set of gatekeepers, shapers and influencers in order to dislodge the existing ones and free everything up. This is the overt managerial authority CS will take on: overseeing 'tendering processes', 'franchises' and 'strategic commissioning' of services. In the name of market freedom, inevitably we experience increasing state centralisation as regards 'Culture'.[vi] This marshalling of state production of symbolic value uniquely chimes with the forthcoming independence referendum – helping to make-concrete the assumptions of a nation-state 'oneness of will' in the context of nationalist production of space:

"Through the structuring it imposes on practices, the State institutes and inculcates common symbolic forms of thought, social frames of perception, understanding or memory, State forms of classification or, more precisely, practical schemes of perception, appreciation and action."[vii]

Not all institutions need be shaken up in this way. The large National cultural institutions had already been removed from Scottish Arts Council charge in 2006 by the (then) Scottish Executive and placed under its 'direct responsibility'. More importantly, in 2010, activity bundled together through cross-party support under the moniker of Traditional Arts was exempted from such overt market competition under the protection of a cultural Scottishness – though very much governed within a diaspora/ancestry/heritage-tourism nexus.

CS is both the manifestation of policy and the mechanism through which policy is projected. It performs to and also shapes policy within the bill's legislative framework. This framework’s definitions "task Creative Scotland with making real and bringing to fruition the value and benefits of the arts and culture in Scotland [including] in terms of unlocking creative and entrepreneurial potential ... for example, by encouraging commercial banks to better understand the economic potential of the arts and culture."[viii]

CS is doing what it's set up to do – as has been seen in policy developments in Finland[ix] for example. There is an international travelling set of policy concerns, which we might learn from. This means looking beyond our own opportunism and constructions of victimhood with regard to wider struggles for social and economic justice.

But whatever the actual international experiences of this competitive 'solution' to economic stagnation, paradoxically CS does identify a very real set of conflicts in inequality of cultural provision and communication. This sits in contrast to those who have self-pronounced their guardianship of 'Scottish culture', and foregrounded a positive consensualism attributable to a unified set of common interests.

This is about the social and economic relations of cultural production, where special interest groups of unequal power do compete over scarce resources of society . This is done, consciously or not, to gain advantages over others, including advantages of distinction. Such groups are not fully static but are more dynamic and overlapping constellations formed around accruing cultural capital and labour opportunity; “products of rationalized social construction [that] lack [fully] social solidarity”.[x]

Those who residually dominate now face disruption of their intra- and extra-relations, and seek the continuity of their previous, comparatively stable, forms of patronage. Yet there's a self-flattering misunderstanding in 'the arts' that CS remains solely or even primarily an arts funder; assigning value judgments in contradiction to the economising role CS is tasked to do by Scottish government.[xi]

Partly it's a question of the processes by which whose creative labour gets valorised, whose is defended and expanded, and whose is devalorised in struggles for distinction. The state is no neutral arbiter disinterestedly representing everyone's interests. In the past the business of the state was more fully that of those cultural brokers and producers who are still in a relative position of authority to aggregate and voice disaffection. In doing so, 'arms-length' state agencies facilitated a particular dominance in the means of cultural production and communication. It is these class-structuring effects of state power which are being recomposed under the vision of the competitive nation.

It might, then, be insightful to expose the artists' (sic - an unfaithful reduction of those agitating beyond view) letter to a critique of similarly liberal 'anti-market' ideology with regard to the exploitation of Higher Education:

"[Hayward] argued that that ideology appears by virtue of its enlightened sneering to oppose 'markets' and to resist their undesirable 'social outcomes'; but that in fact the ideology does not oppose markets but instead contents itself with a polite request that the university be cordoned off from their operations. This doesn't work. The ideology does not deserve to be repudiated because it is 'reformist' but because it has a class basis. That is to say, it assumes that the 'values' which it wishes to protect ought to be protected only within the university and therefore (if implicitly) only on behalf of those who have access to it."[xii]

A convenient myth advanced for something called Scottish culture is of a left-field set of shared values. With this we're increasingly seeing the notion of class 'ethnicised' – Étienne Balibar's identification of the ignoring of class within ethnicity as if 'ethnic groups' are not fractured by class like everyone else.[xiii] However, cultural leadership agendas[xiv] have taken a distinct turn in Scotland. Contra the notion put forward of damage being done to a pre-existing Cultural Scottishness, this leadership agenda has been formative in embedding an economic 'elite' in public institutions involved in state production of symbolic value (facilitating entrepreneurial behavioural reform through 'infrastructural power'). This is nation-state formation at work – the reassuring of specific class interest through tying them in with the production of a 'competitive' Scottish nationhood.

It may then be revealing to consider recent disquiet as a conflict over relations of authority granted by the state to exercise sovereignty over property rights – to exclude, regulate, or attach significance to aesthetic practice. It's a struggle over values and claims to status (prestige) and scarce resources. It's about establishing a relationship of domination and subordination. This is the basis of conflict. The object of such conflict is the status quo and the consequences of change under the conditions of competitive nationalism.

To take the position in this transformation that CS is something externally inflicted is to deny agency; to deny the self-interest, opportunism and politicking in the processes upon which CS is contingent. A weak, emotive narrative of injured or embattled 'Scottishness' doesn't cut it. Complaints of incompetent or insensitive management is to miss or bury the point.[xv]

We are, rather, caught in the midst of various forms of neoliberal enclosure and restructuring. These are seen by competing individuals, networks and agencies to offer openings for a range of agendas, seeking to gain purchase on institutional structures. It is precisely these meshing of egoistic interests that effaces any significant debate about the underlying antagonisms in Scotland's cultural policy: "how judgements of taste are related to the social position of actors and associated with struggles for distinction."[xvi]

Creative Scotland

Creative Scotland is the merger and expanded remit of the public bodies, the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen. It remains a confusing and self-contradictory set of proposals overwhelmingly seeking to makes artists instruments of government policy – in the words of the bill, artists are to “support the government’s overarching purpose.”